A bug called Synthia: biologist creates new life

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Synthetic life has been created in the laboratory in a feat of ingenuity that
pushes the boundaries of humanity’s ability to manipulate the natural world.

Craig Venter, the biologist who led the effort to map the human genome, said
yesterday that the first cell controlled entirely by man-made genetic
instructions had been produced.

The synthetic bacterium, nicknamed Synthia, has been hailed as a step change
in biological engineering, allowing the creation of organisms with
specialised functions that could never have evolved in nature. The team at
the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is investigating how
the technology could